UCF NASA Experiment Takes Flight

NASA’s commercial partner Orbital ATK Inc. is scheduled to launch the Cygnus spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will take several experiments into space including one the University of Central Florida and Texas A&M worked on together for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. (NASA.gov image)

Five experiments testing everything from how fire reacts in space, to the effectiveness of a lizard-inspired adhesive are headed to the International Space Station on Tuesday, March 22.

NASA’s commercial partner Orbital ATK Inc. is scheduled to launch the Cygnus spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will take several experiments into space including one the University of Central Florida and Texas A&M worked on together for NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC).

UCF’s Center for Microgravity Research supplied the experiment apparatus for the Strata-1 experiment, while partners at Texas A&M supplied the electronics to Marc Fries at NASA-JSC and his team at NASA. The UCF and Texas A&M Strata-1 experiment, led by Fries, will study the properties and behavior of the impact-shattered “soil” found on asteroids, comets, the Moon and other airless worlds.

“Compared to some of the other experiments this time around, ours doesn’t sound incredibly sexy,” said physics professor Joshua Colwell, Ph.D., who led the UCF effort.

Space Florida helped fund the UCF component of this experiment. “But it is important especially as we get ready to send spacecraft and people to asteroids and eventually Mars. It’s a great time to be working on space science. We’ve been quite busy with many different projects related to that next frontier” said Colwell.

According to NASA, the Strata-1 investigation could give us answers about how layer of loose, heterogeneous superficial material covering solid rock “behaves and moves in microgravity, how easy or difficult it is to anchor a spacecraft in regolith, how it interacts with spacecraft and spacesuit materials, and other important properties.

This will help NASA learn how to safely move and process large volumes of regolith, and predict and prevent risk to spacecraft and astronauts visiting these small bodies.”

The University of Arizona-led mission is scheduled to launch to the asteroid Bennu to collect samples later this year. The spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid in 2018 and will use a robotic arm to nab samples from its target. Once the samples are securely onboard, the spacecraft would return to earth in 2023.